Revisited - July 15, 2004

The doctor came in with the ultrasound machine.  I never looked at the screen, but turned my head to the left and alternately closed my eyes and looked at my husband and my friend.  I already knew, but their faces confirmed.  Death had visited my womb, and our son was gone.  Whisked away to the arms of Heaven, away from fear, pain, doubt, confusion, and all the vestiges of this sin-stained world.  Amidst the tears, there was grace.  Grace to trust God….I remember thanking Him by faith, for this was His will for us in Christ Jesus.  I didn’t have to understand it or like it or want it.  I didn’t, didn’t, and didn’t, but by His grace—only by His grace— I could choose in that moment to trust.  We turned to each other almost immediately, and it was as if we were thinking the same thing:  Trena, our friend who had gone Home just four days before, was there and could greet him as he entered Heaven.  She could take him on her lap and tell him all about us—especially lots of stories about his silly daddy whom he would have to wait to meet.  To this day, that remains a beautiful picture to me…we loved Trena so much, and it was obvious that we would name him after her.  We had wrestled with that third name so much during those eight months, and now we knew what it was to be….Trenard.

I look at your picture now, and I can still feel the skin on my finger against your face.  I loved touching your body, holding your shell….it wasn’t you, but since it was all I had, it was wonderful…as wonderful as could be, considering the pain.  I never would have called it wonderful then, because I was so sad, but from where I sit now, with only a memory…it was wonderful.  Even then, by the grace of God, I had a bit of perspective.  Not as much as now, mind you, but some.  You were safe and would never have to live in this broken place.  You were whole and would never have to be teased or deal with the crushing blows of rejection.  You were healthy, and nothing and no one could hurt you.

I miss you, Hunt.  You are my gift, and I can’t wait to hold you again.

Our Cramazing May, Episode VI

 Consolidation and repacking at the parentals' house:

Blankets, shoes, baby toys....check!

 Instant oatmeal, granola bars, powdered juice packets....check!

 Sunscreen, kleenex packets, hand sanitizer....check!

Almost ready to GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our Cramazing May, Episode V

I love this picture of my friend, Mindy. 

Almost three years ago, she walked down the aisle with her dad and met her groom, Brad.  It was a beautiful wedding, and I was honored to help with some of the details of the day. 

The next day, Brad and Mindy gathered at her parents' for the gift opening.  It was such a beautiful weekend!  The wedding was outside, and there were a thousand personal touches all around the place.

This spring, as we approached our travel date, Mindy and Brad, who are both flight attendants, wrote and let us know that they wanted specifically to help cover part of the cost of our plane tickets to India.  What a blessing they have been to us over the years!  They have prayed for us, cared for us, and now, they wanted to help with our adoption trip in a very tangible way.

So when I found out that the baby shower for Mindy's first baby, due next month, was on the day before we flew out to India, I was elated!  The shower was in my hometown, so I might very well not been able to go to it under normal circumstances.  But since Beth was staying with my parents and we needed to drop her off there anyway, we finalized our travel plans around being able to be there for the shower.  It was great to be able to celebrate with Mindy, who looked fabulous, by the way!  I've known Mindy my whole life, and I've never seen her looking so beautiful....she truly was "glowing"!

I love this picture of Mindy...she was a little caught off guard for the photo, but I still love it!

 Mindy reading over advice given by other moms...

 Trying on a hat that was knit for Baby Minnard...

 ...and isn't this the cutest sweather you've ever seen??!

Beth was very excited about her first baby shower!

 It was a red-head party!  The three youngest girls in the room all had matching hair....too cute!  :)

Mindy bravely let the little ones "help" her.  :)

 Thank you, Mindy and Brad, for being our friends and for blessing us again and again....we love you guys and are SO happy for you!  Come on, Baby Minnard, be born really soon! 
(If he/she is born in the next couple of weeks, I can go down to the hospital and see the new arrival, since they live about an hour from where we are now!)
What an added and unexpected blessing to be able to be celebrate their baby just as we were getting ready to go get our baby!  I will be meeting Mindy for brunch on Friday, and I'm looking forward to introducing her and Brad to Tom, either then or someday soon.

Our Cramazing May, Episode IV

On the morning of May 14, we woke up bright and early (Okay, it probably wasn't that early; then again, I had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep!) to finish up the packing and be gone on our incredible adventure.  There was so much to do still, in spite of all the work and prep we had already done.  Packing for that many people who were going to be in such different places was quite challenging:  Neil with 2 families, one where he needed school uniforms and the other where he didn't; Beth with my parents; Rex with us in 3 different climates; our clothes, and, of course, clothes for Tom in three different sizes!

Thankfully, our faithful and available friend and intern, Noel, came over to help with the kiddos and with just about anything I asked of her.  I can't even remember all that she did now, but all I can say is THANK YOU!  Noel, you blessed us so much that day...it was fun having you around to cheer me on and you were super duper helpful!  I can't even say how helpful....we probably would have left a lot later than our already-late leave time of 3 p.m.

One of the things that Noel did that day is that she became our chief photographic documentarian.  Here are some of the images that she captured....

C000847 was Tom's passport application number.  Here, I am pointing to India's passport application update website and noting that it says, "Passport has been granted and is expected to be dispatched by 20-05-2011.  Subject to all documents being in order."  It was a very big deal when it was updated to this status from the previous one, which had said, "Application has been received and is expected to be dispatched by 10-05-2011.  Subject to all documents being in order."  The date was 10 days later, but in the newer update, it actually stated that the passport had been granted.  Now all we needed to do was to get there and find it!  I had gotten very familiar with this passport website, so much so that I am pretty sure that I knew more about it than the Indian passport official we eventually spoke to.

Our travel partner, Scott, helped me to make our hotel reservations for our arrival in India.  For some reason, I was having trouble, and Scott and his expertise with all things business-in-India came in quite helpful even early on.  A sign of things to come.  I spent moments in between packing doing all sorts of last-minute computer things as they would come to mind.

By this time, I had moved upstairs to print.  The Hub was busy, too--paying bills, organizing things for while we were gone, making sure we had our traveler's checks, etc.  We were in task mode for sure!

I had the thought that maybe I should print out a screen-shot of Tom's application status from the Indian passport website.  This became a very important piece of the puzzle on the day we appeared in person at the passport office.  I am so grateful that the Lord gave me the idea to do this, as I'm not sure that we would have been able to move forward in the process without it.

After printing Tom's, I decided to print a screen-shot of L's application status as well.  Later, it would be extremely important that I had paid close attention to her application as well as to Tom's.  Praising God for making me just a little bit OCD about stuff like this!  ;)  I say that tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that every member of our travel group had strengths that came in handy and that God used to bring our children home.

Another thing we had to do was to print out a copy of our Show Hope grant application, as it had to be mailed before we took guardianship of Tom.  We were blessed to receive a grant from Show Hope (Shaohannah's Hope at the time) when we were adopting Neil, and we are praying that God will use them to again provide for some of our unexpected travel costs.  Either way, though, we love Show Hope, as they are a blessing to so many families and have been used to bring so many orphans around the world into forever, loving, God-centered homes.

Here is our packing list, with lots of it crossed off!  We would buy the food once we got to my hometown.  Mom and I needed to have a reason to go to Target after all!

 Many bags!

 Rex and Beth spent lots of time on the couch that day watching Saturday morning (and afternoon) cartoons.

The Bible to the left of our wedding picture and bouquet belonged to Thomas, paternal grandfather of Hoffbeast.  Thomas was an immigrant from Ireland and a minister of the gospel.  Tom is named partly after his great-grandfather Thomas and partly after Thomas the apostle, who is oft-credited with first taking the Good News of Jesus to India.

At 3 p.m., we locked the door and headed out.  Rex and Beth were safely situated in the car seats, and Noel, Jeff, and I stood at the car and prayed.  We prayed that God would protect us, that He would provide for our needs, that He would go before us with the passport officials, that Tom would bond well to us.  It was a special time, anticipating that there would be a time a few weeks from then, when we would stand in the same place, holding our son and introducing him to our neighbors.

It happened.  It really did.

Then and Now

Same girls, different toy(s)...

2009

2011

Interns to Staff

This summer, a lot of our HLIC staff are out here in Colorado taking classes; one of those includes Bethany, a former intern who is now on staff in Chicago.  Here I am in 2009 with that year's HLIC intern class:

What a joy it was tonight to join Bethany for her birthday dinner and realize that now, with Sam and Teresa joining staff this summer, that brings to 75% the number of interns from that year who have joined full-time with our ministry.  Praise God for raising up laborers for the harvest!  I have loved my years working with our interns, and as I think about turning the reigns over to someone else, it's great to be able to see these woman making longer-term commitments to full-time ministry.  When the above picture was taken, none of them had yet begun their internships.  Now, 3 of them are on staff and the other (Lauren) is teaching in the inner city.  And besides the statistics, the reality is that God has moved, growing, maturing, and changing these precious ladies into women who more readily reflect His image.  He has used them to disciple kids, empower ministry partners, and share Christ with women in prison.  He gets the glory, and we praise Him!

And here they are today.  Sam will be serving full-time with the Campus Ministry in Maryland; Bethany is on staff in Chicago; Teresa will be reporting to Jacksonville, where she will work in the prisons with the HLIC team there.  (p.s.  Our family hasn't seen Teresa--who lived with us during her intern year-for almost a year, so we are loving being out here together with her this summer!  We miss her so much!)

Month One

A month ago, Tom and I touched down in America.

How is it that it was such a short time ago?

Here are some things about Tom that I don't ever want to forget...

-the way he yells "Abba!" when he wants to get our attention, especially mine.
-the fact that he called his daddy "Mama" for the first couple of weeks.
-the way he points with his pinky fingers
-the way he nuzzles in when he's tired, left thumb in mouth and either his right hand on our throats or left pinky finger feeling our faces.
-the way he uses the palms of his hands to feel.
-how he loves touching Daddy's whiskers with his hands.
-how "holding hands" means that he holds onto our pinky fingers.
-how he chatters in Oriya when he is pretending to talk on the phone or when he sees something out the window and excitedly wants to tell us something.

For those of you who have met him, you know what I mean....the kid is p-r-e-c-i-o-u-s!

Tonight we went to a drive-in movie.  There, he was not quite as precious, as he wouldn't sit still and then wouldn't fall asleep.  Between him and Beth, it was the best drive-in movie I've never seen.

And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Colorado Summer Scenes

Tonight, our friends, Matt and Rene, came over to welcome us and to just get to spend some time together.  We have lived with Matt and Rene (and last time around, their daughter, J) during our last 2 summers out here, so being in an apartment with just our family is a little strange.  Very good, mind you...it's exactly what we need this summer, but we miss our friends, just the same.  Last time around, Beth and J were roommates...this year, they are off scootering together!  They were having such fun together in the apartment courtyard.  The space here is just perfect for our kids to be able to play outside.  We are thankful that God has provided a wonderful place for us to live and play for these weeks.

At some point, I'll have to pull out the then and now pictures of Beth and J.  For now, here are some pics from tonight's courtyard session...

 J and Beth, scootering away...and having a marvelous time!

 Her hair was braided today, but by day's end, it was back to her normal flyaway look.

Neil, Beth, J, Tom, and Rex.  Try telling all these kiddos NOT to throw any rocks....right.  We're trying, though!  It's especially difficult to tell Tom, who doesn't understand our crazy English words yet.  He's doing a great job all in all....he's so patient with us!